English Patterns. Check It Out by Google.

Submitted by tulvit on Tue, 09/27/2011 - 19:49

It's no secret that all languages consists of numerous sentence patterns, and English is not exception.

We all use patterns but never think about it 'cause it occurs rather automatically. It's work for our native language as we read, listen, speak, write and think on this language from childhood. And it doesn't work for foreign language because it's foreign. We must live in and by language to start using it correctly and automatically.

So, what should we do if our English isn't fluent enough yet but we want to know, are we using regular "pattern" or not? Using textbooks or asked someone on forum and so on takes too much time.

But yeah, you can use Google! It's fast and easy.

How it works. For instance, lets check out previous phrases "but yeah, you can use google" and "and English is not exception".

We will use some Google search features:

Phrase search ("")

By putting double quotes around a set of words, you are telling Google to consider the exact words in that exact order without any change.

and

Fill in the blanks (*)

The *, or wildcard, is a little-known feature that can be very powerful. If you include * within a query, it tells Google to try to treat the star as a placeholder for any unknown term(s) and then find the best matches.

For the first phrase:

Check Out by Google phrase But yeah, you can use
Google found over 4 million results, so this phrase is correct.

For the second one:

Check Out by Google phrase and English is not exception
Google found only 1 result. Then is it correct or not? Lets replace "English" to "*".

Check Out by Google phrase and is not exception
Now Google found over 2.5 million results, so phrase "and English is not exception" is truly correct too.

Lets check out something initially wrong. For instance, "isn't fluent enough already".

Check Out by Google phrase is not fluent enough already
As we can see, no result found. Thus it's definitely wrong. And for the phrase "isn't fluent enough yet"

Check Out by Google phrase is not fluent enough yet
there are 364 results. Hence, it's correct.

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